Katrina Palmer

Katrina Palmer

Born 1967 in London where she also now lives and works, Katrina Palmer’s practice encompasses sculpture, writing, drawing, audio environments, performance, and video.

Palmer is best known for her investigations of sculptural materiality, which often involve written compositions and site-specific recordings to explore histories of absence within landscapes or institutional spaces. Her commission 'End Matter' for Artangel in 2015 saw her situated on the Isle of Portland where Portland stone is quarried. She produced an audio tour based on her writing during her residency on the isle which was turned into a play for Radio 4 and a publication.

The award is a collaboration with the Contemporary Art Society, generously supported by Anna Yang and Joseph Schull, who will acquire an artwork produced during the residency for this year’s Partner Museum, Touchstones Rochdale.

The panel consisted of Sorcha Carey, Director, Collective, Edinburgh; Rosie Cooper, Director, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge; Caroline Douglas, Director, Contemporary Art Society; Sarah Hodgkinson, Senior Curator – Collections and Exhibitions, Touchstones Rochdale, Rochdale and Liz Mytton, Director, Theatre in Flow, Rochdale; Elizabeth Price, Artist and Professor at the School of Art, Kingston University; and chaired by Daniel F. Herrmann, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Projects, the National Gallery, London.

Palmer has exhibited widely, including at Tate Britain, the Hayward Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and the Henry Moore Institute. In 2014, she was awarded the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists, and was shortlisted for the Contemporary Art Society Annual Award in 2015. She completed her PhD at the Royal College of Art in 2012 and this year received an honorary doctorate from the University of Sussex. A third edition of her book 'The Dark Object' (Book Works, London, 2010) was published this year. Palmer is an Associate Professor of Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art.

The National Gallery Artist in Residence is a collaboration with the Contemporary Art Society

The National Gallery Modern and Contemporary Programme is supported by